It has also won an award which I can tell you more about in July 🙂 The contest results are not public yet. But I am thrilled!!

You may enjoy this book if:

1. You have ever had a crazy, quirky, weird, strange, funny roommate.

2. You like to laugh out loud

Also a few other side notes reguarding Ingram Spark…

Although I found there uploading process quite laborous, I LOVE the look of the print book. It is great. Also they have been more than helpful everytime I call them. So if you’re thinking of self publishing, just know, while they may not be the easiest, they do provide a quaility product. Which is huge.

Writing a book is not for the faint of heart. It is not, as I once believed, something you just do.

No. Its actually a journey you go on.

This journey, my journey, has been a long one. Approximately 3 years longer than I estimated and so much more work. Editing, re-editing, scrapping chapters and re-writing chapters. Like all journeys there were times of exhilaration and joy and times of passionate frustration. More than once I was given reason to believe I may FINALLY have landed an agent. But when those led nowhere, I decided to self publish though Ingram Spark, a company with several DIY publishing options.

I wish I could say this was a thrifty walk in the park, but it truly has been neither cheap, nor easy. Uploading the book in all the correct file formats was beyond me as each file for the book, ebook and corresponding covers were required to be in different formats. I thought it would be pretty simple. I’m no computer genius, but I’m savvy and once blogged for over a year so I somewhat understand computer things…. But this was…a lot.

And just when I was about to pull all of my hair out of my help and let the grand idea of my publishing my book be put to rest, my wonderful husband stepped in to help. With his knowledge of coding he spent hours getting the ebook formatted. And sizing things. And tabbing things…He is wonderful. And now we are only days away from a book release so that is VERY relieving. Not to mention EXCITING!

I cannot blame Ingram Spark for my computer ignorance. I can only say (from my experience) its a bit difficult to self publish though them. I am hopeful the final book will be awesome and can’t wait to see it. One good thing, I did have a good experience calling them and they were super helpful.

All this to say that the long journey is finally coming to an end. I can see a finish line. I’m not sure I can say I would do this journey again. But I’m glad to have done it.

I can priceline hotels like nobodies’ business. A few years ago I went on a trip with a friend to California and I did some intense research on Priceline and learned how to master it. Now I am sharing my secrets. I am going to make this as simple as possible so listen closely.

Priceline is actually one time when procrastination can be a good thing. I have often gotten my best deals when I have waited until the night of. This is because hotels get more and more desperate to rent out their unoccupied rooms as the night gets closer. That is not to say you should wait until the night of, but the later you wait the better deal you may get.

1. To get the most bang for your buck you must BID not pick from the deals they already offer.

2. Choose the town you want and the area of town you want. BE CAREFUL – only pick the area you want.

3. Choose the star level. My rule of thumb is to pick the most amount of stars first, once you rebid you can always pick less.

4. Bid. Priceline will give you a guesstimate of the “average” amount the hotels around the area are going for. My rule of thumb is to cut that by 1/2. Example: if the average hotel is “$120” I am going to bid at $60 give or take $10. If your bid is accepted it is final. Congrats you have a room. If not rebid.

5. Rebid. This is where it can get tricky. OPEN A NEW BROWSER. This allows you to start fresh. You must change something in your bid (either the area or the star level) or wait 24 hours to bid for the same thing. My favorite trick here is to find areas of town that do not have as high of star level as you want. You can do this by clicking the areas of town separately and seeing the highest amount of stars available in each area.

Here is an example: I want to stay in north Austin but my bid was rejected. To rebid I will look and see that in Central Austin the higest amount of hotel stars available is 3. So this time I will bid on North Austin at 4 stars and I will check off central austin as an additional area so that I can rebid. However, priceline has to give me at least a 4 star hotel therefore I am essentially only bidding on hotels in North Austin because the only hotels that priceline is affilated with in Central are 3 stars or less. You can do this with as many areas as you need to and rebid as many times as you need to, but just be careful. If I was to chose North and Central with 3 stars then I am up to get a room in either area because they both have 3 star hotels in them. Make sense?

Each time you rebid you should open a new browser as priceline greys out your orginal bid giving you the impression you have to keep it like that to rebid (which you dont).

7. You can practice your bidding in a city you are not interested in if you type in $1.00 to bid with. This is a good way to get a feel for what you are doing and I doubt you will get a hotel for $1.00 so it’s a pretty safe way to practice.

This is a very short explanation its kind of the quick and dirty. If you want to know even more there is so much out there on google, but I hope I have helped and best of luck!

“Just when I think I have learned the way to live, life changes.” Hugh Prather

For the most part I do not dislike change, infact I often find it refreshing.

This past week I started a my final 12 week internship for school. It is at a rehab hospital working patients who have had spinal cord injuries. It is both amazing and overwhelming at the same time. Sadly, this new rotation is not in Austin aka my favorite city in the world. I am now in Houston amongst the traffic, pollution and perservatives. But…there have been some great changes lately!

The worm has left!

The book is moving forward!

I made these life changing cottage cheese and raisin muffins!

The snacking squirrel doesn’t lie. The trick to getting a glorious muffin top really is over filling the muffin pan.